


Complication

by nom



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-30
Updated: 2011-06-30
Packaged: 2017-10-20 20:54:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/217003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nom/pseuds/nom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She loved Stefan and missed him. She loved Damon and he was right there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Complication

**Author's Note:**

> Set after "As I Lay Dying."

She longed for Stefan. She loved Stefan. She missed his warmth, his persisting desire to be good, the way he cared for not just her but her friends, her family, their town.

Those qualities were what had made him unable to sacrifice Damon. What had made him sacrifice himself instead, to a monster. To becoming a monster himself. Again.

She wanted Stefan back.

She had Damon, who she loved too. Incandescent Damon, flaring between cruelty and barbed wit, angry loss and unexpected tenderness. He'd seemed like a caricature of sin when she'd met him, the dark side of the coin.

She knew different now.

Stefan was not always a pure knight, bright and shining. He wanted to be, but sometimes, sometimes when it mattered most, he was the one who gave in to darkness and dragged himself and others into the mire.

Damon was not just a charming, vicious predator. Though that was simpler for him, a state he preferred over the messiness of feelings that were always painful and might be requited.

Not only were unhappy endings so much more predictable, but when Damon could convince himself that frankly, he didn't give a damn, they were a lot easier for him to deal with. Even if the unhappy ending in question was likely to be his own.

Sometimes she wondered how much he resented her, resented that she'd been another chink in his armor of not-caring.

Little brother Stefan, first love Katherine, and her -- chinks that opened gaps and made it possible for others to slip in and peel him open to feelings and hurt and selflessness.

-

She'd taken Damon into her bed. He'd already wormed his way into her heart, and she missed his brother so much. She felt so alone, so cold.

Too many losses in a row.

She still had Jeremy, though something was odd there and she'd worry about that as soon as she and Damon weren't obsessively trying to find Stefan, come up with ways to get him away from Klaus when they did, grieving for him as lost, or distracting themselves from grieving for him. She still had her friends, though despite all they'd gone through together it felt as though they weren't as close as they'd been before.

Before. All of it. Her parents. Discovering the whole vampire and curse and doppelganger mess. Even discovering who her biological parents were, and much as she disliked them, both of them sacrificing themselves still made her feel something. And Jenna. Jenna who she missed almost as much as her real parents.

If she'd been given to self-destructive behavior -- which she wasn't, making a perfectly sensible agreement to save everyone she cared about in exchange for her own life was self- _sacrificing_ , not self- _destructive_ \-- she'd have been tempted to be out there, trying to drink her way insensible, or find distraction in drugs, or fuck herself warm.

Sleeping with Damon didn't feel as much a betrayal as fucking other guys would have. Maybe. He was undead, like Stefan, smelled and felt a little like Stefan. At least she wasn't cheating on Stefan with a real live boy.

She knew Stefan kept worrying about that. Even though he loved her and she loved him, to him it seemed that for her to love a human would be easier, simpler, less _complicated_ than loving a vampire with a 160-odd year history. And a future that was uncertain only in its constance.

Vampires either died a final death or remained... static. Outwardly unchanging, with an unceasing lust for blood. Even if they didn't give in to their addiction, stopped themselves from getting human blood fresh from the source, the addiction was always there. Like living with an alcoholic. Of course Stefan worried that it would be easier for her to give up on him and fall in love with someone who had a simple human future, for whom the temptation to turn off human emotions wasn't ever-present, who wasn't already an addict by the time she met him.

But when had she ever done easier? Since her parents had died so senselessly, she'd given up on easy.

Life wasn't simple, love wasn't simple, falling in love with the less-complicated option was not a choice she was capable of making, it turned out.

Just falling in love with _one_ vampire was not something she was capable of doing, it turned out.

-

She loved Stefan and missed him. She loved Damon and he was right there.

Offering her as much comfort as she would take and needling distraction and, bizarrely, practical help. With making sure Jeremy's guardianship was smoothly transferred to her. Seeing that the trust for her parents' house and assets didn't have any hiccups after Jenna. That everything that needed to be signed and reviewed and set up and paid, including for the Salvatore boardinghouse she still incongruously owned, got done in as few sessions as possible. And automated, so that after, all she had to do was open the statements she got in the mail and file them.

Damon cared about her. More than enough to make sure she didn't do anything destructive.

Damon cared about Stefan, would probably have made the same stupid self-sacrificing selfish decision as Stefan had if he'd been in his place.

Except of course for Damon that would have been more selfish and less sacrifice.

But maybe the opposite, if the only way to save someone he loved was to go clean, go _off_ human blood for 10 years and disappear.... Damon might think he'd never have promised that or certainly never meant it, but she knew that when it came down to it, if it was the only way to save Stefan who he loved, or her, he would have done it.

That's why she let him pull her in, that's why she pulled him close herself. Not just comfort and distraction and caring, but his capacity for love, despite himself.

Despite what he considered his best interests. Despite how stupid he considered loving someone to be. How he loved even though it hurt him, even though he knew damn well how to turn it off.

It had always been easier for Stefan to love than for Damon; Stefan had had more joy from it. Katherine made it clear she loved him back, Damon loved him enough to turn with him, Lexie loved him as her partner in fun once he'd given up some of his greater excesses. She herself had fallen for him quickly, decided she could handle that he was a vampire for love of him. People found it easy to like Stefan, to love him, much more difficult to dislike him than Damon.

But Damon went ahead and, knowing it would hurt, let himself care anyway. With Katherine, foolishly. When Stefan got him to turn. With Rose. Trying to help Caroline and Tyler. However unlikely it seemed, wanting to help save the people she cared about. Letting himself love her.

How could she not be drawn to that reckless kind of caring? The way he pushed and sniped but kept oh-so-reluctantly doing more of the right things? The way he kept leaving bits of heart on his sleeve, clearly hoping not to get hurt this time but expecting to anyway?

He was there. He loved her. He wanted her to love him back but wasn't actually expecting her to. So of course she did.

-

She had no idea what would happen when Stefan came back. How changed he'd be, how changed she'd be, how changed all of them would be.

She had no idea what would happen.

She loved them both.

They were brothers. She didn't know how they felt about that. She didn't know how she felt about that. They'd get Stefan back, she knew that.

But what would happen then, whether by that point any of them would be able to conceive of anything but unhappy endings? She didn't know.


End file.
